What has Taekwondo taught me in and out of the Dojang?
Learning and mastering a Martial Art has been a lifelong goal for me. Unfortunately in my early years there always seemed to be some impediment to finding and joining a club. Work, family and other commitments consumed my time in the first two decades out of School. By the time I was in my late 30’s my wife and I were firmly of the opinion that sport was important for moulding our children’s future social skills. My belief is that as they develop; childrens lives need positive influence from parents, teachers, and others so that when they become adults that are culturally and socially adept. After trying the boys out with a number of different sports, I realised that team sports seemed to be more about the parents at times than about the children’s own achievements. After some research I was convinced that Taekwondo may play a role in their ongoing social development. A month after watching the oldest (Lochlan) at Taekwondo training under the instruction of Darryl Gowlett, I decided to join in and was immediately hooked. At first I thought that Taekwondo was going to be easy to master as it didn’t appear to involve much more than some punching, kicking and jumping. As I began to progress through the early belt levels, I discovered that Taekwondo was not just difficult, there was much more to it than simply kicking, punching and memorizing poomse. I learned that it was also about focus, self-discipline, self-control and self-motivation. I particularly enjoyed learning the poomse patterns and adding new ones to my ‘collection’ after each grading. The initial process of memorizing the moves is always a challenge and after mastering the moves it’s then time to [...]
